“In the early days, everything was in New York,” Johnston says. “There were some talented women cartoonists, but I don't think they got involved with the cigar-smoking, beer-drinking guys at the press clubs and literary society. Eventually, comic art spread out across the country. Cartoonists could live anywhere. You can live in your workplace.”

Among newspaper comics, Johnston's long-lived “For Better or For Worse” is still fairly unique. It's a warm, yet sometimes surprisingly complex, look at a normal family as it goes about its very normal life in suburban Toronto.

After nearly 75 years of chasing girls through the halls of Riverdale High and hanging out at Pop Tate’s soda shop, the teenage Everyman Archie Andrews is headed for a makeover....

To keep Archie fresh, new talent was sought, including Lena Dunham, who will bring her feminist take to a four-part story in 2015. Mark Waid and Fiona Staples, two comic book veterans, will be the new creative team for the Archie comic.

It’s natural for friends to fight, but what happens when you fling your friend into space?! KaBOOM!, the award-winning all-ages imprint of publisher BOOM! Studios,and Cartoon Network Enterprises, the licensing and merchandising arm of the network, are excited to announce the six-issue limited series Adventure Time: Marceline Gone Adrift coming this January. Following her first Adventure Time miniseries, Marceline and the Scream Queens writer Meredith Gran (Octopus Pie) returns to team up with artist Carey Pietsch (Bee and PuppyCat) and bring an all-new story featuring everyone’s favorite BFFs, Marceline the Vampire Queen and Princess Bubblegum.

“Meredith wowed us with Scream Queens, and we’re very excited to have her back for this new miniseries,” said BOOM! Studios Editor-in-Chief Matt Gagnon. “She and Carey are the perfect team to show off one of Adventure Time’s most popular friendships. We’re journeying outside of Ooo for this one, so get ready to see what kind of trouble Marcy and PB can get into on a different planet!”

Marceline is on a rampage for mysterious reasons, and the kingdom of Ooo is desperately scrambling to stop her. In trying to save both Ooo and Marceline herself, Princess Bubblegum accidentally propels Marceline into the farthest reaches of space...and strips her of her powers! Guilt-ridden, Princess Bubblegum sets off on a space rescue that’ll test the power of her mind...as well as the power of friendship.

Adventure Time: Marceline Gone Adrift #1 arrives in comic shops on January 14th with a cover price of $3.99 under Diamond order code NOV141125. The issue ships with main covers by Reimena Yee and Mychal Amann, a retailer incentive cover by Britt Wilson, and a special BOOM! 10 Year Anniversary retailer incentive cover by Joe Quinones. The Final Order Cutoff deadline for retailers is December 15th. Not sure where to find your nearest comic retailer? Use comicshoplocator.com or findacomicshop.com to find one! It’s also available for order directly from boom-studios.com.

Jacky Fleming has been creating clever works for three decades, starting back in her student days submitting work to Spare Rib. Jacky’s work frequently embodies some clever and on-the-nose social observations, especially about inequalities – the differences in the way men and women are perceived and treated, for instance, the vast differences between those at the top making the laws, earning a comfortable living supported by tax-payers yet frequently telling that same population struggling by that they need to make more cuts.

Independent comic creator April Malig has a sparkle in her eye and at times goes bananas…at least that is how she categorizes her magic genre comics and short stories! The creator of Magical Bitches which, like one of her favorite manga stories, seeks to prove that strength doesn’t have to come from masculine qualities such as broadswords or machine guns.

Moomintroll and the Moomin family are characters loved by children and parents worldwide who have grown up listening to Finnish writer Tove Jansson's delightful stories about a group of philosophical trolls who face a range of adventures in Moominland.

This documentary reveals the strong autobiographical slant in the Moomins series as it traces the author's own extraordinary story from living the bohemian life of an artist in war-torn Helsinki to becoming a recluse on a remote island in the Gulf of Finland.

Enjoying unprecedented access to Jansson's personal archive, the film reveals an unconventional, brave and compelling woman whose creative genius extended beyond Moominland to satire, fine art and masterful adult fiction - not least her highly regarded The Summer Book. With home movie footage shot by her long-term female lover and companion, it offers a unique glimpse of an uncompromising fun-loving woman who developed love as the central theme of her work.

British military science-fiction author Karen Traviss takes the reigns of the new G.I. Joe series for IDW as the team adjusts to a new world where Cobra has become the peacekeeping taskforce. This new series will be based more in a gritty realism and tap into real-world dangers and politics.

Thrillbent has recently launched a book that seems more and more important to the genre as days go by. It’s called Everstar and it has as its protagonist an 11 year old girl who carouses about the galaxy in her very own spaceship. Comics geared at all ages and featuring females in the lead are few and far between, and this one is about as adventurous as they can get. But more than that, it’s an all female creative team behind the story. Writer Becky Tinker and artist Joie Brown work hard to bring a feminine realism to a story so fantastical.

As a story about a group of misfit superpowered kids, it’s appropriate that Fallen Angels [written by Mary Jo Duffy] would be something of a misfit superhero series, too…it doesn’t look, feel, or move like your typical cape-and-cowl adventure. Its cast is cobbled together from characters old and new, popular (at the time, at least) and obscure, and the characters are constantly butting heads with one another…It’s a non-traditional team with mixed morals and motives, not fighting for good or evil but merely sticking together for the sake of survival and some semblance of friendship/family. Fallen Angels is a coming-of-age story for the entire titular team, and it is more interested in studying human behavior than the high-powered violence of the average superhero tale. In this story, being a teenager comes first, and having powers comes second, an interesting and unusual prioritization that makes for an entertaining if not astonishing read.

Artist Elsa Charretier has primarily produced comics in her home country of France, including previous works Aeternum Vale, an issue of Le Garde Républicain, and backup pages for the Image comic One Hit Wonder. Her current project, The Infinite Loop, which she’s pencilling, inking, and coloring, had a very successful crowdfunding campaign.

What happens when women draw their own bodies in a medium that has represented them so poorly? While graphic books published by men each year still outnumber those by women, the exclusionary landscape of American comics has been called into question. From blockbuster successes like Alison Bechdel’sFun Home and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, to rising indie artists and vibrant online communities, female cartoonists are producing some of the most exciting work in the genre. Here, 23 successful graphic artists share their illustrations and discuss how women are reshaping a form that has marginalized them nearly since its inception.

Writer and illustrator Cece Bell has been creating children's books for over a decade, but in her latest, she finally turns to her own story — about growing up hearing-impaired, after meningitis left her "severely to profoundly deaf" at the age of 4.

The book, a mix of memoir, graphic novel and children's book, is called El Deafo. It's a funny, unsentimental tale that follows Cece from age 4 through elementary school, as she transforms from mild-mannered little girl into full-fledged superhero — the "El Deafo" of the title.

In the vast, digital sea of gadget review blogs, Erika Moen's website has two things that set it apart. First, since she's an artist and cartoonist, so all her reviews aren't just text—they're comics. Second, she's reviewing sex toys. Welcome to the NSFW world of Oh Joy, Sex Toy.

The Graduate Comics Organization at the University of Florida invites applicants to submit proposals to the 12th UF Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels, "Comics Read but Seldom Seen: Diversity and Representation in Comics and Related Media." The conference will be held from Friday, April 10th, 2015 to Sunday, April 12th, 2015. Proposals are due January 1st, 2015.

Toon Graphics, aimed at children in the fourth grade and up, is a new imprint of Raw Junior, an independent publishing house created in 1998 by Françoise Mouly who said she was a huge believer in the power of comics to create better readers. “Theseus and the Minotaur” came out on Tuesday.

Ms. Mouly started Toon Books, which publishes comics for children as young as 3, in 2008. Its books are listed on several prominent recommended reading lists (including the American Library Association’s) and are included in state and national school programs and initiatives, which is where the teachers who take them into the classrooms often hear about them in the first place. The books are taught across the country, with the help of 200-page illustrated lesson plans that cover topics from literary interpretation and story arcs to “comics as a genre.” Their use in classrooms made immediate sense, given their similarities to the picture books that children that age were already reading in school.

With Toon Graphics, Ms. Mouly said she hoped to extend this learning process to older children. Though the books also have accompanying lesson plans and follow national Common Core standards, the battle for acceptance, Ms. Mouly admits, may be uphill. Plenty of fourth and fifth graders love comics, of course, but that’s also the time when many teachers and parents are trying to wean children off them.

Lynda Barry will never forget the seemingly simple question that one of her Evergreen State College professors asked her 40 years ago: “What is an image?”

Barry, who went on to become a popular cartoonist, writer and college professor, says that question determined the path of her entire life. She left college with the passion to research the biological function of images and their impact on people’s thought and creativity. Today she is an associate professor of interdisciplinary creativity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and runs the Image Lab at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery.

“It happened because I followed a question I was asked by a teacher when I was an 18-year-old,” she told the Willamette community Aug. 22 during the university’s opening convocation. “You can learn things from your friends, but your teachers teach you how to learn.”

In November Image Comics releases the Saga Book One Deluxe Hardcover. In addition to its striking cover artwork, this 500-page volume collects the first 18 issues of Saga, plus behind-the-scenes material.

The presence of women writers and artists stands out among the recent publications on display in the ‘Comics Unmasked’ exhibition at the British Library. Our favourite pieces include works by Laura Oldfield Ford, Nicola Streeten and Katie Charlesworth. As you go back in time, however, it can become difficult to see the creative minds of women at work in British comics.

Comic book illustrator Lisa Wood is drawing up plans for one of the biggest comic book events in Leeds.

Lisa, who struggled with dyslexia at school, set up the not-for-profit festival in 2007 with the hope it would make comics appeal to a wider audience and raise awareness of how powerful and helpful they can be for children who might be struggling with reading and learning difficulties…

She now illustrates two comics under the alias Tula Lotay – Supreme Blue Rose, with writer Warren Ellis for Image Comics, and Bodies for DC’s Vertigo comics.

The comic book, ["Chess"] which was published in July, follows the story of Elise, a 12-year-old girl who is lonely after moving to a new town with her mother.

After flipping through a book her mother gives her as a gift, Elise is sent into a new world called Newland, where she meets two siblings — Toby and Kate. Kate is searching for the pieces of her heart, which have been shattered and dispersed by a villainous character called the Black Queen.

The story is centered on the journey Elise embarks on to help Kate find the five pieces of her heart and to find her own way back home.

Beginning last summer, Natalie [Symanski], said her daughter [Symana], a third-grader at Sycamore Valley Academy, wanted to start telling the nighttime stories before her bedtime.

Since then, when she started the story of Elise and her journey, Natalie said her daughter has grown as a storyteller.

Most fathers think their teen daughter's boyfriend is a monster, but the dad in the new Image Comics series Sinergy is pretty much on point.

Created by the husband-and-wife writer/artist duo of Michael Avon Oeming and Taki Soma, Sinergy (debuting Nov. 19) stars a girl named Jess whose life turns into something out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when she has her first sexual experience.

Losing her virginity to her beau Leaf activates Jess' ability to see monsters hiding in plain sight — and one of them happens to be her boyfriend.

"Every parent fears their child will get into a bad relationship, and here we really get to play that out with Jess and her monster lover," says Oeming, co-creator of Powers with Brian Michael Bendis.

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